Waiting for Goddo…

Beginners merely pluck and scrape at time,
With all the racket of a tuning orchestra.

Journeymen start with an arrogant pianissimo
Which waxes with each note
Until, tripped by a passing arpeggio,
They fall into a premature melody, and thus,
Masters of waiting are few.

You know them by the measured rests,
The long and soundless deserts
Where the extravagant absence of music
Is foil to wild imagination of rhythms,
Mirages of symphony,
And ghostly whirls
Of non-existent fanfares and cadenzas,
Perpetual anticipation of which,
Orchestrates the studied power
That moves beneath their silences.

2 Comments

Thank you. I do not play now. Once, I learned classical guitar, but now my fingers no longer obey me. But I listen a lot. To the subtle sounds of the trees, birds, wind, as well as singers and players, and I try to hear in all of them the sound of what their music is really saying. That is what the poem is about, I guess. What the music is saying in the gaps between the sounds.